


looking up for heaven (waiting to be buried)

by akingdomofunicorns



Series: hold me in this wild, wild world [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, I have come back from the dead thanks to this episode, Implied puppy love, Show centric, Spoilers for Episode: S08E02, title from a bastille song cause always gotta be on some emo shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2020-01-24 02:47:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18562372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akingdomofunicorns/pseuds/akingdomofunicorns
Summary: "You think we’re to die tomorrow, but what if we survive?”Arya and Gendry talk on the eve of battle.





	looking up for heaven (waiting to be buried)

“What’s this from?”

His hand feels rough against the puckered flesh of the scar.

“A knife.”

“Who was holding the knife?”

“A waif, ugly and annoying.”

He chuckles, seeing right through her. It’s as if no time has passed, no years, no distance between them; he knew her when she was a skinny child passing for a boy, he knows her now that she’s a woman grown, flushed and naked beside him.

“Why’d she do that for, then?”

“Because I was Arya Stark of Winterfell and no one else.”

He is quiet for a long time, longer than she would expect, and she’s almost tempted to turn around and look at him, but she can tell he’s awake by the rhythm of his breathing, still a bit ragged. He never learned to be silent, after all. His hand travels upwards, calloused fingers tracing a pattern from scar to scar, and she feels the goosebumps rise. She had felt sure of herself earlier, sure that he wanted her as much as she wanted him; but now the deed is done and her confidence is nowhere to be found. She wishes he’d say something. Anything. She wishes they were still children traipsing through the woods, catching skinny rabbits filled with maggots, eating dirt and roots when there was nothing else to fill their stomachs.

“How about this one?” he asks, voice warm like melted butter.

Is he afraid of her? Sometimes she thinks he is, sometimes he looks at her like he wants to be broken by her little, childish hands. Deadly hands, dirty hands.

She smirks, “I tripped in the woods, back when Hot Pie still travelled with us.”

“You hid it from me,” he groans.

“I hid a lot from you.”

“Like your crush?”

His tone is so cheeky that she is forced to turn around and punch his stomach. He lets her, she knows he does, because this new Gendry —with his new scars, and his new beard and, for some unfathomable reason, bald as an egg in the middle of winter— could very well try to fight back, and he might even stand a chance.

“I did not have a crush!”

She can see her old self, sometimes, when she is with him; the indignant little girl who left King’s Landing searching for her pack.

“Did too.”

She means to fight, but he shifts his weight until he is hovering over her, his arms caging her in against the featherbed. He runs his fingers through her hair, searching for the pins and ribbons tying it back. They were too busy earlier, too desperate.

“Your hair is grown.”

His touch is soft, careful. It reminds her of her lady mother and the way she would run her loving fingers through the wild mess atop her head. Gendry used to muss her hair, she remembers suddenly, just like Jon. She was always fond of bastards, bastards were always fond of her.

“I would like to live to see it longer,” he adds when she doesn’t respond. “Long and white, framing a face full of wrinkles. I thought you were dead; I thought you died at the Red Wedding.”

“I thought you died at the hands of the Red Bitch.”

“Aye, would have,” he says, “but Ser Davos saved me. You think we’re to die tomorrow, but what if we survive? What then?”

War, most likely, and blood spilled at her feet, tainting her up to her knees. War against the Others, and then war against Cersei, and then, most likely, war against the Dragon Queen to keep the North. War, in Ned’s name, in Robb’s, in Catelyn’s, in Rickon’s. War, until she is old and grey and wrinkled, until her hair reaches her feet, white like fresh snow. War, until she is nothing but rotting flesh beneath the ground, until her bones turn to dust and her name becomes a memory.

She doesn’t want to tell him that, though. _He has eyes the color of summer skies_ , she thinks. She was the first of Ned’s children to be born in what would be the endless summer, she has never experienced true cold, not beyond the mild summer snows that covered Winterfell from time to time, carpeting the ground for a few days, but melting quickly underneath the yellow sun. She wraps her legs around him, brings him closer, letting his warmth seep through her. Now everything is covered in twenty inches of snow, and there is more to come.

Gendry, her sullen and loyal bull… headstrong enough to survive another winter, and another, and another. Gendry, born in the beginnings of a warm autumn, like her dead brother. She cannot tell him that all she sees before them is Death. Death and war and blood. Blood like Lannister red getting underneath her fingernails, tainting his soot-covered skin, making him warmer, and warmer, and warmer.

He used to make her smile even when Death hovered over her shoulder, and she hasn’t grown so cold, yet, that she’d pry hope away from his thick fingers just to cut her throat open.

“Well,” she murmurs, pulling him down for a languid kiss, “I think I would very much like to live to see _your_ hair longer, too, _Ser._ ”

“Aye, m’lady,” he chuckles against her lips.


End file.
